James Went
General information▶Date of birth: 20 March 1845 Place of birth: Worcester ▶Father: James Went Mother: Elizabeth Preece ▶Spouse(s): Frances Jemima Skanatt Date(s) of marriage: 29 December 1869 Place(s) of marriage: Barbourne, Worcester ▶Occupation: Clergyman (Anglican); Schoolmaster ▶Lifestory: James Went was ordained but spent much of his life as a teacher; he invested in property in Cheltenham by the first decade of the twentieth century. He was born in Worcester in 1845, the only son of tailor James Went, of Worcester, and his wife Elizabeth (née Preece). He attended Trinity College, Dublin, BA 1867, MA 1871. Went took holy orders and was ordained Deacon in 1868, and Priest (both Worcester) in 1869. In 1869 he married Frances Jemima, youngest daughter of John Martin Skanatt, of Worcester, at Barbourne, Worcester; they had two daughters and one son. In 1868 he was licensed to become Curate of St Helen and St Alban’s, Worcester, where he remained until the following year. But Went’s main working life was to be in education. After teaching initially in a preparatory school in Great Malvern, in 1869 he took up the post of Assistant Master (Classics) at the High School, Nottingham (also boarding some pupils in his home). In 1871 he moved as Senior Master in the Junior Department, and Second Master, to the new Bradford Grammar School. From there he went on to Wyggeston Boys’ School as Headmaster from 1877 until his retirement in 1919, where over his tenure he almost doubled the number of pupils to 300, and where he also, at various times, took charge of Queen Elizabeth’s Grammar School, Leicester and the Leicester Municipal Technical School. By 1905, by now a distinguished educationalist, he had assumed the role of Chairman of the Incorporated Association of Headmasters. In 1909 the Lloyd George survey of land values for Cheltenham shows him as the absentee owner of 16 Wellington Square, Pittville, presumably as an investment, as he continued to live in Leicester. His wife died in 1920, aged seventy-nine, a year after his retirement for Wyggeston School. Between 1922 and 1926 he served as a Canon of St Martin’s College Chapel, Leicester, and in 1927 became an honorary Canon of Leicester. The Revd. Went died in 2Q 1942 at Bromyard, Herefordshire, at the age of ninety-seven. ▶Moved to Pittville from: (absentee property owner) Moved from Pittville to: ▶Date of death: 2Q 1942 Place of death: Bromyard, Herefordshire ▶Date of burial: Place of burial: ▶Notes: Leicester Evening Mail 21 March 1927 ID: 19111 Contributor(s): John Simpson/Alan Munden
Found no family members on the Pittville History Works Database (based on “relation to head” in the 1841-1911 census records and 1939 register records) |